The Bounty (1984)
Last Watch Date - February 20, 2023
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
I was on a bit of a historical kick and re-heard the story of the mutiny on the Bounty. Generally speaking, my previous experience with that story was pretty superficial. I think everyone has heard the phrase "mutiny on the Bounty" but maybe aren't really sure what it actually was. The story itself is not particularly interesting. A ship gets taken over by some of the crew. It's a mutiny! The way this movie goes about telling that story is kind of odd, too.
You could start by thinking "this is a Dino De Laurentiis movie" and assuming it'll be good. Why would you assume that? He has some terrible movies. Maybe you saw the cast and were like "this is DEFINITELY a good movie" -- ok I can't blame you there. The cast is nuts. Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins, Daniel Day Lewis, Liam Neeson, Laurence Olivier. How can it be bad?! It's not really bad per se, but it's also not good. It's a really long movie with a lot of down time. I'm pretty sure the actual journey from England to Tahiti took less time than this movie. There are gratuitous "native" scenes for presumably getting some nudity in the movie to give it a spark. I wonder if this was an edit after the fact when they saw how boring it was. It goes on forever. I get it, they're natives and they have customs, but do we have to watch so much of this? Also the people coming to the boats whooping it up, jumping in the water as if they're in the presence of gods when they had already met the English and knew of them. It's all so silly.
I'm sure you know how I feel about the pacing by now. It's slow and doesn't have enough going for it to hook you as a viewer. Even for someone who was dead set on watching this, I was feeling like turning it off at multiple points. But hey, I stuck it out. I made it to the end! Or did I? They don't actually show the end. For the mutineers at least. We know in real life what happened more or less. They got themselves set up on Pitcairn Island and had kids Eventually they died from in-fighting between each other until there was only one man left with a bunch of women and children. You don't get to see any of that in this movie. Instead of showing some of that drama and tension, we got a pretty cool text overlay saying "no one knows" (we do). Did Stephen King write this ending? Ridiculous.
Back to the cast really quickly - they're good. Obviously. Too bad the rest of the movie kind of sucks.
Recommended?
No. If you want to know the story of the Bounty, you're better off catching a more interesting documentary or using your eye machines and reading about it. Unless you're REALLY into Pacific Islander boobs. There are a ton of 'em.
